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Saturday, October 21, 2006

A New Book in My Library

My sweetie bought me a book for Sweetest Day. It's a book I've been wanting for some time and I'm thrilled to have it. The book is, The Peasants, by Wladyslaw Reymont. You may not be familiar with this book but Mr. Reymont won the Nobel Prize for Literature for it in 1924. If you'd like to read his autobiography you can do so here. He died the year after he received the Nobel Prize. His life was almost as bleak and troubled as the lives of the peasants he wrote about, no doubt where he got his amazing insight.Stephen Danko was reading this book a while ago. Have you finished it Steve? Will there be a book review/reflections on your blog?

I'm looking forward to reading this book and to gaining an understanding of the lives of my ancestors, who were all peasants in Poland. There aren't very many texts available (in English) that give a good description of the daily lives of 19th century peasant life. As I'm reading it, I'll be looking for cultural themes and rituals that made the trip to America with the Polish immigrants. How many do you think survived? It will be interesting to see.